A potager-style garden with a bespoke potting shed and raised beds.

This four-year-old potager garden has matured into a flourishing space where beauty, productivity, and sustainability work in harmony. Inspired by the traditional French kitchen garden, it combines the elegance of formal design with the abundance of year-round harvests.

At the heart of the garden are twelve raised beds, built from golden cypress pine milled and sourced from Victoria. Chosen for its warm tones and natural durability, this timber is rot- and termite-resistant, ensuring a long-lasting structure that will support productive growing for many years to come. The beds are arranged in a formal geometric layout, creating symmetry and order while allowing easy access for planting and harvesting. At the centre of this well-maintained patch stands a graceful timber arbour, over which a stunning Albertine rose climbs, softening the structure with seasonal colour and fragrance.

To one side, an English-style potting shed overlooks the garden, positioned so its windows take in the full beauty of the productive beds. This space provides both charm and function, allowing the owners to plan future plantings, store tools, and prepare seedlings while remaining immersed in the garden’s atmosphere.

From the beginning, significant effort was invested in building fertile, living soil—the true foundation of the garden’s success. Over the past four years, cover crops and green manures have been grown and incorporated to add organic matter and improve soil structure. Generous applications of compost and locally sourced cow manure have further enriched fertility. Supporting this cycle are two composting bays, which are heavily used year-round to recycle garden waste and provide a steady supply of nutrient-rich organic matter. Today, the soil is dark, rich, and resilient, rewarding each planting with healthy growth and abundant yields.

The owners are active in their patch year-round, growing crops such as tomatoes, chillies, beans, eggplant, cucumber, zucchini, potatoes, mustard greens, strawberries, and garlic. Alongside these staples, annual and perennial plants—including calendula, cosmos, orach, borage, sunflowers, echinaceas, dahlias, and nepeta—provide seasonal colour and attract pollinators.

After four years of care and refinement, this potager garden is both ornamental and productive, a sustainable landscape that nourishes body, spirit, and imagination.